In 2009, Mitch McConnell insisted on a very specific list of requirements for Barack Obama’s Cabinet picks. But now it’s 2017 and this time Donald Trump is picking so Mitch McConnell couldn’t be bothered with silly ethics requirements.

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Hypocrite, Mitch McConnell doesn’t want Trump Cabinet picks held to the same standard as Obama’s

According to CBS News, Mitch McConnell’s Senate has no plans to slow down confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks which are scheduled this week.

In fact, Mitch McConnell shrugged off any concerns that many of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks have not yet been fully vetted for conflicts of interest by the Ethics Office.

That was then, this is now

McConnell’s new position on the process for confirming Cabinet picks is of course the exact opposite of the position he took when it was Barack Obama doing the Cabinet nominations. In 2009 McConnell insisted that all of President Obama’s Cabinet picks meet a list of requirements which included completing their financial disclosure statements and being cleared by the Office of Government Ethics before the Senate could begin their confirmation hearings.

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In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, McConnell noted that paperwork from the Trump nominees was “still coming in.” Which is an extraordinarily dismissive take on a matter of ethics for the next White House.

Office of Government Ethics raises major concerns about rush to confirm Trump picks

Yesterday, the Director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, rang alarm bells over the fact that his office has not yet had time to complete its review of many of Trump’s nominees. In fact, Schaub indicated that his office has “lost contact” with the Trump transition team. And Shaub also suggested that the hurried nature and lack of ethics review risked “embarrassment for the President-elect,” because “announcing cabinet picks” without letting the ethics office review their financial information in advance.

In a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, Walter Shaub noted that he didn’t know of a single instance in the nearly 40-year history of his office in which the Senate kicked off a confirmation hearing before the nominee had finished the ethics review process.

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